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I'm curious as to how Spanish is handled. I know that it's largely phonetic. I've always found it easy to read/spell the words. But I also know there are various accents and even word choices (tu vs vos). But I don't know enough about Spanish around the world to know how great those differences are. In school, we mainly learned Mexican Spanish and learned about some of the differences with Spanish in Spain, but other than that we never really went into the details of different dialects.
I'd say if it's possible for Spanish, it should be possible for English unless English dialects and accents are truly just that much more different.
Spanish spelling has inconsistencies, too--in fact almost all languages with an alphabetic script do. Of all languages, Finnish is said to come about the closest to true one-to-one correspondence between spelling and speech.
One difference between Castilian and Latin American Spanish is the pronunciation of the letters C and Z when they come before E and I (ce, ci, ze, zi). In some dialects, they are identical to S. In others, they are pronounced like English TH in "thing."
In the dialects that pronounce them like S, therefore, these letters are superfluous and it would make sense to respell the word "cinco" as "sinco" and "pez" as "pes." This would eliminate the problem of having to learn which words have a C/Z and which have an S.
But if you do that, then you create a problem for the speakers who need those letters to differentiate between sounds. How would you pick which dialect gets the preferential treatment?
Granted, English is vastly more irregular overall and there are a lot of silent letters that could be eliminated because they are not pronounced anywhere. It is a fact, though, that all fluent readers recognize words instantly by sight; they are not sounding them out every time they see them. Having distinct spellings for homonyms (right/write/rite, to/too/two) therefore makes reading faster and more efficient, once the spellings have been learned. And English has a lot more homonyms than most languages and these different spellings are more helpful than they would be in, say, Italian.
I'm curious as to how you pronounce the name of that company. To me, both words do indeed rhyme with "fairies."
It's hard to transmit through a post. I would say "Shari" the same way I say my sister Sharon's name. The "a" is short, as in Cat. If you say Cay-it (or Shay-ren), though, you won't get that.
"Berry" I say the same way I say "ferry" or "merry", but if you say those words as "fairy" or "Mary", you won't get that, either. Berry is closer to bury, but they are different. It is an "eh" sound.
These might help. At any rate, many people in the USA say them all as "Mary". We would have to re-spell them for those people.
To further illustrate the differences in speech patterns across the United States, y'all/you guys/yoose people might want to try taking this brief quiz:
When I was at university in the seventies there was a minor push for spelling reform. I remember one of the more outspoken students claiming she would not teach spelling as a primary school teacher. As I recall, she did not teach anything for very long and left the profession rapidly.
I think it is in the too hard basket and we already have to deal with American spelling versus English. I have to go to my practice session to practise my spelling. I might need to bring my licence or they will license someone else.
Enough for this early hour! Italian is much easier to spell and pronounce.
I thought that this word had been in use for a while now.
Anyway, here's a thought exercise: how do you pronounce through? How do you pronounce trough? These two words differ by only one letter, yet they are pronounced rather differently. The first one would be phonetically closer to thru. The second one would be phonetically closer to troff. We already see thru used on road signs, to the extent that I believe it is considered an acceptable variant now. I'd like to see something like the second one develop, because it would be much more intuitively obvious to a non-native speaker of English. The gh letter combination could still be used for the sound as in ghost.
Through though cough bough borough thought Gough (street in San Francisco pronounced goff)
It would be great to have uniform spelling and pronunciation. Language reformers like George Bernard Shaw have been promoting this for at least 150 years.
Maybe we could take a cue from the French, who have a board that approves new words. The French don't care what they do actually, as long as they pronounce it properly. -GBS
The English language that we speak today is already quite different from how English was spoken and written in the time of Geoffrey Chaucer, and the English language continues to evolve with neologisms added to it all the time.
One thing for which we may all be grateful is that, even with our neologisms, we now at least have a standardized English which we did not have in the past. The advent of printed dictionaries has made this possible, along with the work of lexicographers such as Noah Webster (of Webster's Dictionary fame) who was chosen by Alexander Hamilton to edit the Federalist Party newspaper.
Advocating a reform of the English language through making the spelling of English words all phonetic would be a step backwards, rather than forwards, IMO. It may even complicate the language, rather than simplify it, as there are numerous additional letters that would need to be added to the language's alphabet in order to accommodate specific pronunciation of words in conformance with the International Phonetic Alphabet.
I think it best not to attempt to force any artificial "improvements" on the English language.
Just visited the website of the 'International Phonetic Alphabet', and it has to said that the IPA soundboard is a goldmine of entertainment...I now have something to go to next time I'm consuming IPAs
To further illustrate the differences in speech patterns across the United States, y'all/you guys/yoose people might want to try taking this brief quiz:
To further illustrate the differences in speech patterns across the United States, y'all/you guys/yoose people might want to try taking this brief quiz:
The quiz nailed me accurately as being from the Northeast.
Nailed me to the northeast, too. But I'm from California.
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